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Friday, February 13, 2015

Happy early Valentine's Day! We tend to do it up around here on the big day but then again any excuse for a little party and I'm usually all in. I think it's fun to celebrate these little holidays even in small ways. I don't go to overboard with making a lot of things but one thing I have made the past few years are these yummy cookies. If you love Dark Chocolate you will love them. Simone helped with the sprinkles as you can probably tell and she did a really good job. I also dip a few in just plain chocolate because my husband doesn't love massive amounts of sprinkles. If you don't want to go thru the dipping process don't worry, they are still super yummy left plain. To dip them I just melted about one cup of Nestle Semi Sweet Morsels in the microwave added about a teaspoon of vegetable oil to make it more fluid and dipped away. We laid them out on waxed paper and added the sprinkles while they were still wet. A few minutes in the fridge to set them up and they are ready to eat. I do keep the dipped cookies in the fridge just to make sure they don't melt and stick together. Plus I like them cold and crisp right out of the fridge. Yum!

Wednesday, February 11, 2015

I haven't used my workspace to make something in over a week but I have used my space to wrap a gift. A super sweet Valentine's Day gift for a certain little person I know. I totally can't wait for Valentine's Day and I wouldn't be surprised if that heartbeat and xoxo ribbon I used didn't end up in my Project Life® spread because I kind of love both of them. On a side note, I sure hope she shares one of the Blow Pop mini's with me, especially the Strawberry Lemonade one.

Wednesday, February 4, 2015

Its February and that means two things; a) Valentine's Day is almost here and b) my birthday is this month. I love that my birthday is in February, it means more pink, more chocolate and more celebrating! I also hope to include more making to that list. To help with that I recently went thru some of my stash and made sure that some of the special pretty items I have been saving (okay hoarding) were all within reach and out in the open because one of my goals this year is to use the things I love and not save them. So my goal for the month is to make sure that everything pictured here gets used. I'm thinking the scratch off February calendar card from LifeLovePaper is a total no brainer for a Project Life® spread along with the cute heart card from Marcy. The Cheers card from Jamaica and the Mama Needs a Cocktail stamp from Kelly will be an easy fit in either my Project Life® for my birthday or for a little layout about me with some of the sequins tossed in for good measure. Now granted Kelly's stamps are just hitting the market and not old but I really want to make a point to use them and not just file them away out of sight. I think this would be a really good challenge to take on each month and I would love it if you would join me. I invite you to take a look at your desk right now and grab four things (or more) that you have been saving and set a goal to use them this month, it will be fun! If you decide to play along share a picture of the items you have chosen and tag them #scraptheprettythings and then make sure to tag the finish projects too.

Monday, February 2, 2015

So this year I'm not planning to do one spread per week like I mentioned in my last Project Life® post. So far the go with the flow format has worked for me and I have the first two spreads to show you.

I knew the first one would probably be short since January started on a Thursday so I only used one protector for my first spread. The title card is a photo I took and the January text is a digital file from Digital Design Essentials. The cards are all from the January Studio Calico Project Life® kit. It was a super simple and fast spread to work on which I totally love.

The second was a two page spread and it covers January 5th to the 18th. My approach was to just look thru my photo stream and grab anything that I loved or felt would be a good story to include. I didn't have a ton of photos for the week of the 5th so I just kept adding photos until I had enough to fill a spread. The next time I sit down to work in a spread I'll start with January 19th and repeat the process again.

I will say that its super liberating because honestly for the weeks where I might be lacking in photos its makes it so much easier to not have to come up with something to fill in the blanks.

The large JAN veneer came in the January Studio Calico Project Life® kit, The Everyday Beauty is an older Ali Edwards digital set. Kelly Purkey made the Good Eats, its a digital stamp. The wood veneer letters are old Studio Calico. The rest was stuff I made digitally except for the the light bulb, that came from an older Studio Calico printable by Hello Forever that I extracted so I would have just the bulb.

Very little embellishing on this side but the gold banner and pink heart are from the January Studio Calico Project Life® kit and the acrylic geotag is from Bananafish Studio but it looks like her shop is closed right now. I really love how the photo of my daughter and I turned out cropped to cover the four slots. If you want to do something similar I found that if I made my photo 6 x 8.25 it fit in the pockets better and had much less of a gap in the middle.

I have a good feeling about my less pressured free and easy approach so I should have more spreads to share very soon.